Ellevest impresses analysts and enrages some women by firing 99% of its investors with a late-evening email, and funneling them to Betterment

Ellevest is a case study failure of identity and woke politics in our industry. There is absolutely nothing that Ellevest does for their female investors that any other female-led practice in any wealth management doesn't do as well or better. "We get you" is not a value proposition, it's a vibe. The slant from Amanda Steinberg is priceless - the problem that held her failed firm and Ellevest back is... MEN (husbands). Priceless. No, the failure of both firms is their lack of any actual value proposition. There is NOTHING different about managing female money vs male money. Or white person money vs black person money, or straight money vs. gay money. All of the advisory firms specializing in those labels are playing a losing game, a net negative value proposition. "We get you" works for a tiny subset of the intended target, and alienates every other market. Consumers choose a wealth manager based on their skill and capability, not their sex or race or other characteristics or labels/letters. Ellevest managed to incinerate over $150mm of investor capital and has nothing to show for it other than a sub-scale RIA with a handful of politically minded female investors and no productive growth strategy. The last sentence really has me in stitches, wondering whether "Betterment intends to tailor its marketing and services to *benefit* from the more ‘woke’ brand Krawcheck built over the last 11 years." If there is any lesson that should be learned from the demise of Ellevest, it's that woke branding and marketing is a complete failure in wealth management (and most everything else as well).

The end to another dumpster fire. Nice job Ellevest team - 10 years, resulting in an ~$500k/client acquisition cost. Couldn't you see the writing on the wall before your last big raise?